What do video editing, chess, creativity, entropy, a fulfilling life and intelligence all have in common?

Let me take you for a ride…|| Starting a video project, an essay, or a painting is daunting at first. You have little idea where it will take you, but you start with the idea that it will come together. Living artfully is about applying the process of art to life. The process coincides with the equation for entropy, or likewise, the formula for intelligence; and like chess openings, it is positionally developing your pieces to allow for the maximum possibility of winning. In chess, there are so many possibilities that in a decision tree there is no certainty, so you pick the path that allows for the highest chances of winning. Life has a bit more variables than chess. As free human beings with such capacity, it’d be a shame not to take a few risks in life and to only take the certain path, as it’d be a shame to leave your knights and bishops undeveloped with the fear of what lies outside. Go head, embrace the unknown, explore yourself, and pursue your wants and dreams.

Accepting the unknown is the foundation of creativity. Creativity is the foundation of problem solving. To neglect the unknown, to neglect risk, is to handicap yourself to “loss aversion” – the most crippling mental heuristic developed through evolutionary means of survival, where fear of losing is roughly twice as powerful as the desire to win. Chill, you won’t die by going outside of your comfort zone anymore. The voices telling you no…they’re a natural part of evolution, but fall short of an objective truth…probably by about 50% as a former psych stats student would say. Be comfortable with not knowing –if it doesn’t work out, it’s not the end.

One leap of faith at a time – keep on keeping on. That’s what I had to tell myself the last 4 days of video editing, working with thousands of clips. What entropy! I was scared to start –no end in sight, no idea where the story will go, and at one point in my life I would’ve been highly discouraged, but oh what joy it is to have finished! I’m ecstatic!! I’m talking about this video and another personal video I will release next week. This Spanish school video here shows a significant improvement to my previous promotional videos. I can’t tell you why specifically…just as how we don’t remember the food we eat or the books we read but they make us who we are. I have been keeping my eye out to improve as a videographer and this video shows it. I’m happy to be paid to do this, and I am super excited to show you the other video next week on the lessons I learned in the last 8 months.

It’s funny, I just finished that video, exhausted, right before sleep, and as I reflect, I write this instead. Damn, it feels good.